HOT SPRINGS, Ark. — Roger Franklin walked slowly to the end
of the bench and quickly sat down, the dejection evident in the look on his
face.

Niko Stojiljkovic was next as the final seconds ticked off
the clock at the end of North Texas’ opening-round game Friday night against
Louisiana-Lafayette in the Sun Belt Conference tournament on the Convocation
Center court.

This wasn’t the way it was supposed to end for the Mean
Green, not in a 74-55 blowout loss to the Ragin’ Cajuns, not with a 20-loss
season.

UNT entered the year with sky-high expectations after
advancing to the Sun Belt tournament finals in each of the last three years,
not to mention four of the last six. The Mean Green returned its top seven
scorers, including a potential NBA lottery pick in Tony Mitchell.

UNT (12-20) never lived up to its billing due to injuries
and a lack of continuity in its first season under Tony Benford and was left to
ponder what went wrong after the most bitter loss in a season full of them.

“It’s hard,” UNT guard Jordan Williams said. “Everyone
thought we were going to make a run. It hurts to know that we fell short.”

The Mean Green had won at least one game in the Sun Belt
tournament in every season since 2006 before going one-and-done in its final
appearance before leaving for Conference USA.

Nothing went right for UNT in its final year in the Sun
Belt, and its final game in the league was no different.

The Mean Green trailed nearly the entire way and saw ULL
(13-19) break the game open with an 11-2 run early in the second half.

Bryant Mbamalu hit a 3 at the 15:57 mark to put the Ragin’
Cajuns up 44-31.

UNT never recovered, despite a big night from Williams. The
sophomore led UNT with 19 points. Senior Roger Franklin added 13 points in his
final appearance with the Mean Green, while Mitchell posted a double-double
with 10 points and 12 rebounds in what might have been his final appearance
with UNT.

Elfrid Payton led four ULL players in double figures with 20
points. Mbamalu and Alan-Michael Thompson added 16 each, and Shawn Long
finished with 12 points and 11 rebounds.

Mitchell said before the tournament that he would consider
his options in terms of declaring for the NBA draft following the season and
stood by those comments after UNT’s loss to ULL.

“Coach, my family and I will sit down and talk about it,”
Mitchell said.

ULL contained Mitchell offensively for a third time this
season. He scored just 10 points combined in the teams’ two regular-season
games.

ULL head coach Bob Marlin credited assistant coach Shawn
Forrest, a former UNT assistant, with helping design a game plan to contain
Mitchell.

“Coach Forrest knows me, but it’s up to me to go out there,
play and perform,” Mitchell said.

The Mean Green needed more from Mitchell on a night it was
shorthanded.

Benford suspended junior guard Alzee Williams for the game
for a violation of team rules. Williams was UNT’s fourth-leading scorer with an
average of 11.1 points a game.

“Since I have taken the job, we have talked about being
accountable on and off the court,” Benford said. “He’s a great kid from a good
family, but he made a poor decision, something that we are not going to tolerate
in the program.”

UNT had already lost Brandan Walton, Jacob Holmen and Justin
Patton to season-ending injuries earlier in the year and didn’t have the
firepower to stick with ULL without Alzee Williams as well.

That was especially true in the second half, when ULL
outscored UNT 41-26.

“We were stagnant and were not cutting hard,” Jordan
Williams said. “We got confused on some plays and were not communicating on the
court.”

UNT spent the night playing from behind after Payton scored
the first four points in an 8-0 run that put the Ragin’ Cajuns up 12-6.

ULL maintained a lead the rest of the half took a 33-29 lead
into intermission.

Jordan Williams scored nearly half of the Mean Green’s
points in the opening half, finishing with 14 while hitting all but one of his
six shots from the floor.

Williams went just 1 for 7 from the floor in the second
half.

“I heard the coach on the sideline telling them to deny me
the ball,” Williams said. “I still had some good shots. I just didn’t knock
them down.”

Neither did anyone else for UNT when the Ragin’ Cajuns
pulled away and left the Mean Green pondering what went wrong in a season that
started with such promise.

“It’s extremely disappointing,” Benford said. “If we had the
team that we had at the beginning of the season, things would have been
different. We lost our best shooter and perimeter defender [Walton] the first
game of the season. We had so many season-ending injuries that made it tough to
get into a flow.”

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